With the rapid growth of telecommunications in recent years, it is common for a person to receive a communication in many forms including voice, electronic messages, and facsimile. Indeed, at a business, school or home a person often receives telephone calls, electronic messages and facsimile transmissions from a variety of sources throughout a given day. These different forms of communication may be independent of each other, or they may be connected and complimentary of each other.
When a person leaves her home or office, she often wants to forward her calls to a designated number where she may be reached while she is away. Systems are known for forwarding telephone calls to a designated number. However, with respect to electronic messages, a person must typically log onto some type of distributed computing network, such as an Internet-based system, to check and retrieve electronic messages received while the person is away from her office or home. In the case of instant messaging to a wireless personal digital assistant, a person may know that they will be located in an area in which their personal digital assistant has no service. Accordingly, the person must wait until she returns to a service area to receive messages sent to her while she is in the out-of-service area.
With respect to facsimile transmissions received during the absence of the recipient, facsimile transmissions typically print at the recipient's home or office facsimile machine and await her return. The recipient may either forward the facsimile transmissions to a designated remote facsimile number, or the recipient may have someone re-fax the document to her at the designated remote number.
There is a need in the art for a method and system for forwarding telephone calls, facsimile transmissions and electronic messages to a single repository from which those calls, messages and transmissions may later be retrieved.
There is also a need in the art for a method and system for converting electronic mail and facsimile transmissions into an audio format that may be forwarded along with forwarded telephone voice calls to a single forwarding number for receipt by a called party.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.